MUSIC

Manchester trumpeter, band leader and Gondwana label boss Mathew Hallsall is right at the forefront of today's thriving jazz scene. He has an enviable discography that takes in a wide range of jazz styles and the spiritual eastern leaning sounds of When The World Was One make it one of his best. It's the sort of mellifluous record that swells all round you, lifting your spirits filling you with joy and hope. Helping that be the case are the heavenly harps and shimmering piano chords, koto and bansuri flute payed by his Ensemble, but centre stage is always given to Halsall's own beautiful, heart aching trumpet playing. From bold heights to vulnerable lows, this is as good as jazz gets.

Inspired by the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains north-west of Madrid, his home since August 2022, Milo Fitzpatrick presents Sierra Tracks the new album from his expansive, cinematic, chamber-jazz project Vega Trails.

Having cut 2022’s beautifully resonant debut album ‘Tremors in the Static’ as a duo, alongside saxophonist Jordan Smart (Mammal Hands and Sunda Arc), Milo now substantially expands upon that blueprint with his follow-up, ‘Sierra Tracks’, which, as the title suggests, was conceived at his new home in central Spain and adds piano, vibraphone and strings to the mix.

From the epic five-minute opener, ‘Largo’, onwards, there’s a cinematic feel to ‘Sierra Tracks’, as each piece unfolds according to its own sweeping narrative, often wonderfully evocative of the mountains’ wide-open spaces, and also sometimes elaborately arranged with cello, orchestral strings, vibraphone and piano, to evoke their awe-inspiring natural splendour. ‘Reverie’ has a refrain that fades in and out, like a daydream”. ‘Els’ is more firmly rooted in folk melody, while ‘Dream House’ and ‘Sleepwalk Tokyo’ boost a sense of otherworldliness.

blueblue is the latest full-length from multi-instrumentalist and all-around vibe wizard, Sam Gendel. The record, out October 14 via Leaving Records, is a concise, tightly wound song suite whose 14 tracks each correspond to a pattern within sashiko, a traditional style of Japanese embroidery. This conceit remains playfully ambiguous — to what extent, if at all, is Kagome (籠目, woven bamboo) meant to evoke the pattern of the same name, for example? But there is an intuitive sense, throughout blueblue, that Gendel has, in this instance, narrowed his focus. To say that blueblue feels richly textural might be a little on-the-nose, thematically, but alas…it does. There is an intimacy, a humility, and a strength at play here that typifies the work of a master craftsman. Only an artist could make it sound so effortless. A Los Angeleno by way of Central CA, Gendel is by now an institution. Across a dizzying slate of solo releases and collaborations, he has amassed a reputation for not only virtuosic musicianship (primarily as a saxophonist, though the songs that would become blueblue were all initially composed on guitar), but also for his mercurial and prolific output — a corpus of work, which, while obviously indebted to jazz and hip hop (and the farther flung, experimental corners of both) is, in a word, unpindownable. In this regard, Leaving Records, with its cri-de-cœur of “All Genre,” is a natural home for Gendel. The bulk of blueblue was recorded in isolation in a makeshift studio built in a cabin floating atop a tributary of Oregon’s Columbia River. Having sketched out a set of guitar melodies, Gendel recorded the album in five-or-so weeks, during which time he became well-acquainted with the river’s tidal rise and fall. This organic rhythm, which daily lifted the house to meet the horizon, later setting it down gently upon the riverbed, permeates the record. There are pops and groans and artifacts, and, in Tate-jima (縦縞, vertical stripes)—one of blueblue’s more plaintive tracks—even the faint lapping of water. Equally essential to the feel of blueblue is Craig Weinrib’s kit work. Gendel and Weinrib collaborated long-distance during Gendel’s time in Oregon, with Gendel sending Weinrib half-finished songs, and giving him carte-blanche to record percussion. The end result is a relaxed, confident exchange between two clearly simpatico musicians, particularly evident in Weinrib’s gorgeously attentive brush technique. blueblue is a conceptually sound, mesmerizing, evocative, and sonically idiosyncratic LP. In keeping with its name, blueblue functions as Gendel’s color study, conveying, through repetition and deviation, his devotion to a certain mood — unnamable, but certainly noirish, nostalgic, quasi-psychedelic, and existing in some permanent twilight. Real ones know, and for those who don’t yet, blueblue is an accessible and intoxicating entry-point into Gendel's ever-expanding catalog.

“This is the time that we, who have benefited from the Last Poets should be able to say, ‘it’s the Last Poets. It’s them we should be honouring, because we did not honour them for so many years…”

KRS One wasn’t just addressing the hip hop fraternity when he uttered those words by way of introducing the video for Invocation – a poem written thirty years ago, around the time of the Last Poets’ last significant comeback. He was speaking to everyone who’s been affected by the word, sound and power issuing from the most revolutionary poetry ever witnessed, and that the Last Poets had introduced to the world outside of Harlem at the dawn of the seventies.

In 2018 the two remaining Last Poets, Abiodun Oyewole and Umar Bin Hassan, embarked on another memorable return with an album – Understand What Black Is – that earned favourable comparison with their seminal works of the past, whilst showcasing their undimmed passion and lyrical brilliance in an entirely new setting – that of reggae music. Tracks like Rain Of Terror (“America is a terrorist”) and How Many Bullets demonstrated that they’d lost none of their fire or anger, and their essential raison d’etre remained the same.

“The Last Poets’ mission was to pull the people out of the rubble o f their lives,” wrote their biographer Kim Green. “They knew, deep down that poetry could save the people – that if black people could see and hear themselves and their struggles through the spoken word, they would be moved to change.”

Several years later and the follow-up is now with us. The project started when Tony Allen, the Nigerian master drummer whose unique polyrhythms had driven much of Fela Kuti’s best work, dropped by Prince Fatty’s Brighton studio and laid down a selection of drum patterns to die for. That was back in 2019, but then the pandemic struck. Once it had passed, the label booked a studio in Brooklyn, where the two Poets voiced four tracks apiece and breathed fresh energy, fire and outrage into some of the most enduring landmarks of their career. Abiodun, who was one of the original Last Poets who’d gathered in East Harlem’s Mount Morris Park to celebrate Malcolm X’s birthday in May 1968, chose four poems that first appeared on the group’s 1970 debut album, called simply The Last Poets. He’d written When The Revolution Comes aged twenty, whilst living in Jamaica, Queens. “We were getting ready for a revolution,” he told Green. “There wasn’t any question about whether there was going to be one or not. The truth was many of us still saw ourselves as “niggers” and slaves. This was a mindset that had to change if there was ever to be Black Power.”

He and writer Amiri Baraka were deep in conversation one day when Baraka became distracted by a pretty girl walking by. “You’re a gash man,” Abiodun told him. The poem inspired by that incident, Gash Man, is revisited on the new album, and exposes the heartless nature of sexual acts shorn of intimacy or affection. “Instead of the vagina being the entrance to heaven,” he says, “it too often becomes a gash, an injury, a wound…”

Two Little Boys meanwhile, was inspired after seeing two young boys aged around 11 or 12 “stuffing chicken and cornbread down their tasteless mouths, trying to revive shrinking lungs and a wasted mind.” They’d walked into Sylvia’s soul food restaurant in Harlem, ordered big meals, then bolted them down and run out the door. No one chased after them, knowing that they probably hadn’t eaten in days. Fifty years later and children are still going hungry in major cities across America and elsewhere. Abiodun’s poem hasn’t lost any relevance at all, and neither has New York, New York, The Big Apple. “Although this was written in 1968, New York hasn’t changed a bit,” he admits, except “today, people just mistake her sickness for fashion.”

Umar is originally from Akron, Ohio, but had arrived in Harlem in early 1969 after seeing Abiodun and the other Last Poets at a Black Arts Festival in Cleveland. That’s where he first witnessed what Amiri Baraka once called “the rhythmic animation of word, poem, image as word-music” – a creative force that redefined the concept of performance poetry and stripped it bare until it became a howl of rage, hurt and anger, saved from destruction by mockery and love for humanity. When Umar’s father, who was a musician, was jailed for armed robbery he took to the streets from an early age where he shined shoes and raised whatever money he could to help feed his eight brothers and sisters. By the time he saw the Last Poets he’d joined the Black United Front and was ready to join the struggle.

Once in Harlem, Abiodun asked him what he’d learnt in the few weeks since he’d got there. “Niggers are scared of revolution,” Umar replied. “Write it down” urged Abiodun. That poem still gives off searing heat more than fifty years later. In Umar’s own words, “it became a prayer, a call to arms, a spiritual pond to bathe and cleanse in because niggers are not just vile and disgusting and shiftless. Niggers are human beings lost in someone else’s system of values and morals.”

And there you have it. It's not just race or religion that hold us back, but an economic system that keeps millions in poverty and living in fear – a system born from political choice and that’s now become so entrenched, so bloated on its own success that it’s put mankind in mortal danger. It was many black people’s acceptance of the status quo that inspired Just Because, which like Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution, was included on that seminal first album. Along with their revolutionary rhetoric, it was the Last Poets’ use of the “n word” that proved so shocking, but it would be wrong to suggest that they reclaimed it, since it never belonged to black people in the first place. There’s never any hiding place when it comes to the Last Poets. They use words like weapons, and that force all who listen to decide who they are and where they stand.

Umar’s two remaining tracks find him revisiting poems first unleashed on the Poets’ second album This Is Madness! Abiodun had left for North Carolina by then where he became more deeply enmeshed in revolutionary activities and spent almost four years in jail for armed robbery after attempting to seize funds related to the Klu Klux Klan. Meanwhile, the 21 year old Umar was squatting in Brooklyn and had developed close ties with the Dar-ul Islam Movement. A longing for purity and time-honoured spiritual values underpins Related to What, whilst This Is Madness is a call for freedom “by any means necessary,” and that paints a feverish landscape peopled by prominent black leaders but that quickly descends into chaos. “All my dreams have been turned into psychedelic nightmares,” he wails, over a groove now powered by Tony Allen’s ferocious drumming.

Those sessions lasted just two days, and we can only imagine the atmosphere in that room as the hip hop godfathers exchanged the conga drums of Harlem for the explosive sounds of authentic Afrobeat. Once they’d finished, the recordings and momentum returned to Prince Fatty’s studio, since relocated from Brighton to SE London. This was stage three of the project, and who better to fill out the rhythm tracks than two key musicians from Seun Anikulapo Kuti’s band Egypt 80? Enter guitarist Akinola Adio Oyebola and bassist Kunle Justice, who upon hearing Allen’s trademark grooves exclaimed, “oh, the Father… we are home!”

Such joy and enthusiasm resulted in the perfect fusion of Nigerian Afrobeat and revolutionary poetry, but the vision for the album wasn’t yet complete. He wanted to create a new kind of soundscape – one that reunited the Poets with the progressive jazz movement they’d once shared with musicians like Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders. It was at that point they recruited exciting jazz talents based in the UK like Joe Armon Jones from Mercury Prize winners Ezra Collective, also widely acclaimed producer/remixer and keyboard player Kaidi Tatham, who’s been likened to Herbie Hancock, and British jazz legend Courtney Pine, whose genius on the saxophone and influence on the UK’s now vibrant jazz scene is beyond question.

The instrumental tracks on Africanism are in many ways as revelatory and exciting as the Last Poets’ own. It’s important to remember that the kaleidoscope of styles and influences we’re presented with here aren’t the result of sampling but were played “live” by musicians responding to sounds made by other musicians. That’s where the magic comes from, aided by Prince Fatty’s peerless mixing which allows us to hear everything with such clarity. Music fans today have grown accustomed to listening to all kinds of different genres. Their tastes have never been so broad or all-encompassing, and so the music on this new Last Poets’ album is as groundbreaking as their lyrics, and perfectly suited to the era that we’re now living in.

 

All the Colours of the World in the Black Forest

‘High quality music to be enjoyed by many people all around the world, no matter where they are’ Andreas Brunner-Schwer, MPS Records

The German SABA and MPS family of labels extended this sentiment to include music from musicians all around the world, no matter where they were from - and here on Spiritual Jazz 17 SABA MPS we explore that very theme.

Throughout the ‘60s & ‘70s both labels released a wealth of music from a wealth of international jazz musicians coming from both North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean and the Far East. The aim was to release jazz that was exciting, innovative and interesting, regardless of style: there was swing, blues, bop, avant-garde, fusion – and spiritual jazz. Plurality became a defining feature and the immense breadth of their output made both SABA and MPS worthy European counterparts to American imprints such as Blue Note and Impulse.

On Spiritual Jazz 17 SABA MPS we feature, among others, international contributions from Americans Elvin Jones, Nathan Davis & Dave Pike, Europeans Pedro Iturralde, Jef Gilson, and George Gruntz, and the Japanese Hideo Shiraki. In our extensive liner notes we outline the history of the SABA and MPS labels, and go some way to explain the spirit and philosophy behind the long-standing record company and the musicians who bore their souls to the recording process.

Friedheim Schulz, who oversaw many of the sessions, has fond memories, “These guys had ideas, they had their special thing, it was the time when there were lots of ideas and new sounds and what have you, and [SABA proprietor] Hans Georg was always of the mind that people should do their own kind of music. So he gave them the chance to record and then he would just put out the albums and that was it! The musicians would really play what they wanted to play.”

Their great legacy is a lineage of music that has transcended the fatigues of time, and we’ve picked prime examples from the SABA & MPS catalogues to uphold our own legacy in our long-running series of Spiritual Jazz.  

credits

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Side A
1. Eclypso (Tommy Flanagan)
2. Relaxin' at Camarillo (Charlie Parker)

Side B
1. Come Sunday (Duke Ellington)
2. He's a Real Gone Guy (Nellie Lutcher)

Side C
1. Stella by Starlight (Victor Young)

Side D
1. Juju (Wayne Shorter)
2. Harlem Blues (Phineas Newborn Jr.)

Mammal Hands are a trio of like-minded musicians: Nick Smart piano, Jesse Barrett drums and tabla, and Jordan Smart saxophones. Floa is their second album for Gondwana Records and in the 18 months since their debut, Animalia, they have carved out a growing following both here and abroad for their hypnotic fusion of jazz, folk and electronica: winning fans from Bonobo and Gilles Peterson to Jamie Cullum. Landmark live performances have included shows at King's Place in London and the RNCM in Manchester, as well as a barn-storming debut at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Drawing on a rich well of influences from Sufi and shamanic African trance music, Irish and Eastern European folk music, to Steve Reich and Philip Glass and more contemporary electronica influences, their music is built around deceptively simple sounding ideas that are lent power through the use of repetition and rhythmic loops. They have been compared to both Portico Quartet and GoGo Penguin for the way in which they navigate the choppy waters between contemporary dance music and jazz.

Floa (an old Norse word that means to deluge or to flow) is the sound of a more confident, experienced band: one that has grown together naturally through touring and gigging and through mammoth writing and rehearsal sessions where all three bring rhythmic, improvisational and melodic ideas to the table. Floa was recorded at Gondwana's home from home, 80 Hertz Studios in Manchester, reuniting the band with producer Matthew Halsall and features some of the Gondwana Orchestra strings who played on Halsall's acclaimed album Into Forever. Together they have crafted a wonderful sounding record, the richness of which perfectly illuminates the band's music. Artwork is from Gondwana's in-house design maestro Daniel Halsall whose artwork of symbols created from older symbols perfectly illustrates the creative ideas that drive the band's music.

Recorded in 1970 during the same period of "Overground", UNDERGROUND was recorded into 2 volumes (RT 104 and RT 16), both released in the same year in may and june at Dirmaphon studios, Roma. Together with Overground these records are really fascinating instrumental Free Jazzy/Psych Library, released with the auxiliary of historical Rai session musicians like guitarist Silvano Chimenti and organist Giorgio Carnini. This record collects all Underground' tracks in 1 LP. Established Jazz composer, Sandro Brugnolini written some among the greatest Italian soundtracks and Library music ever.

〈Mille Plateaux〉や〈iDEAL Recordings〉にも作品を残すスウェーデンの電子音楽の名手Andreas Tilliander（TM404）と、ジャズ・トランペッターGoran Kajfešによるコラボレーション作品『In Cmin』が〈Kontra Musik〉からアナログ・リリース！TB-303のベースラインやアナログ／デジタルシンセによる音響彫刻と、Kajfešのトランペットやフルートが交錯し、月面や神話的な風景を想起させる音世界を構築。Terry Rileyの『In C』へのオマージュとして、Cマイナーでの即興演奏を展開しながら、ジャズとアンビエントの境界を越えた新たな地平を切り開いていく一枚です。

Yowzers is a new album by Chicago composer, improvisor, instrumentalist and musical folklorist Ben LaMar Gay. The twelve track collection is a leap forward in the lexicon of Gay’s recorded output, and a veritable masterwork of ancient inner-body rhythms and intuitive melodic storytelling.

It’s worth mentioning that a leap forward for Gay is no small feat. The musical ground he has covered in the last decade, both as a bandleader and collaborator, is immense. His de facto debut album—the 2018 compilation Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun—properly introduced the world to Gay by placing fifteen stylistically diverse tracks from seven then-unreleased albums next to one another, letting the populace outside of Cook County in on an unintentionally best-kept-secret that Chicagoans had already been marveling at for quite some time. That secret has become even more open in the years since, with the full unveiling of those seven previously-unreleased albums, the release of his critically-acclaimed 2021 song cycle Open Arms To Open Us, and the explosive free sonics of 2022’s Certain Reveries.

In addition to being featured on a staggering number of International Anthem releases (including albums by Makaya McCraven, jaimie branch, Damon Locks, Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly), Gay is one of the most prolific collaborators in creative music today. He makes active contributions to Mike Reed’s Separatist Party, Joshua Abrams’s Natural Information Society, Theaster Gates’s Black Monks, and many more. He is also a long-time participant in Chicago’s legendary Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Suffice to say, his credentials are astonishing and the scope of his interests and abilities is seemingly limitless, with Yowzers representing the latest redrawing of that ever-expanding creative borderline.

Much of the music on Yowzers features his working quartet with Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice). But the unlisted feature here is Gay’s own ability to summon and unleash the unique strengths of his collaborators. The quartet material leans into a vocabulary that the group has developed over the course of several years together on the road; and the repertoire delivers an arresting cocktail of pulsing and free rhythms that somehow swing alongside a gathering of melodic phrases that sweep the outer-reaches of harmony with nostalgic echoes of family songs from the living room.

“Building a language, or taking a while to build a language—it’s like every other thing,” says Gay. “These stories are passed around through melody. You write a story and you share the story with individuals, and then you allow their individuality to embellish the story and take it on in another way. That person is a whole universe. It’s about trusting these people—trusting the people you leave something with, just like people trust their kids and their grandkids to carry a thing on. To not give it all away. To keep it in this tightly-knit body and to just keep it going.”

It’s not a new concept for Gay. One uniting factor in his deep, multi-faceted discography is a never-ending commitment to taking the stories of the past and pushing them outward, filtered through a sense of self, to keep that information moving.

Information moves through Yowzers via the intuitive physicality of Gay’s creative polyrhythmic constructions as he covertly delivers familiar folk tunes and tales. “It’s the most natural thing,” says Gay. “That’s how the world is. There are overlapping rhythms all around us, and so it reminds you of the reality of the world when you hear them. It’s a loop and the loop is always changing.”

Yowzers is ripe with the fine mash of that loop’s changes and diffusions, recalling the high-minded freedom of Liberation Music Orchestra, the abstract boom-bap balladry of Georgia Anne Muldrow, the unbridled rhythms and sandpaper bellows of Bukka White, the harmolodic cartoon glory of Arthur Blythe’s Illusions, or the oft-copped but rarely distilled patterns of Naná Vasconcelos. More amalgam than pendulum swing; a fresh thought made up of old ideas, like some imaginary Sacred Heart Ensemble led by Elvin Jones and Rashid Ali. It’s all there, filtered through an improvisational approach and a lifetime of stories and secrets embodied. For a man who has inhabited and traveled these continents so extensively, it’s safe to call this work true Americana, despite what that word might mean to the average white person in the United States.

“A big part of the language this quartet has developed is spatial,” says Gay. “It’s seeing and hearing it live.” Translating that language to a studio situation is a tough task, even for a seasoned crew. “You’re dealing with a thing that is older than the industry that sells it, and if you’ve never experienced those bodies in a room there can be a disconnect.” Striving to document the magic of those live moments, to great end, Gay chose to track the quartet pieces (“the glorification of small victories,” “there, inside the morning glory,” “I am (bells),” and “cumulus”) for Yowzers live, in real time, seated with his bandmates in a small circle at Palisade Studios in Chicago.

The spectrum of the album is widened by a batch of music created via Gay’s highly successful approach to composing in-studio, augmented with contributions from his bandmates, instrumentalist Rob Frye, and a mini-choir comprising vocalists Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu. This straying from the quartet material throughout the course of the record acts as an expansion of detail rather than an interruption of continuity.

All together, the pacing and flow of Yowzers is proof-positive of Gay’s practiced grasp on how the album format can traverse such a breadth of atmospheres. The titular album opener “yowzers” is a simple, soulful, three-chord piano and vocal repetition nestled in the hypnotically swelling effect of the Woods/Parker/Nwaogwugwu choir. The undecorated lyrics leave ample room for a listener to comprehend references to the binding existential crises of our times. It’s a Blues that everyone in the world should feel in their bones:

Ain’t gon snow no more x4

Rain gon pour and pour x4

Fire don’t stop no more x4

“for Breezy”, a could-be New Orleans dirge, straddles the deep sigh of a heavy sadness and the sweet lift of a fond look back, echoing the most contemplative moments of Duke Ellington’s small group arrangements. Gay’s clustered synth chording sets the scene while Frye’s breathy flute and Moretti’s delicate brushwork are positioned front-and-center along with a synthetic static—the nagging question of darkness even as beauty blooms. Gay’s flugelhorn enters at the 1:35 mark, maneuvering slowly around Frye and locking the vibe into place. It’s a gorgeous and fitting tribute to an old comrade.

“John, John Henry” begins with doomy oscillations and click-clack electronic rhythm loops hovering atop a contextually disjointed swing beat from Moretti. Enter Gay and his choir, digging into a take on the dusty-yet-timeless tale of man versus machine, an update we didn’t know we needed and an entrance we didn’t know we wanted. The way the group’s vocal rhythms hit here is a classic example of the Gay conundrum: an idea that reads as challenging on paper but sounds simple to the ear and feels intuitive to the body. With spectacles underfoot and charts out the window, the listener sings along, unencumbered by know-how. It’s all in service of Gay’s ongoing exploration and expansion of folklore in his work—arguably the one concept that bridges the gap between all of the disparate elements of his oeuvre.

This bottomless bag of tricks never induces fatigue, instead allowing for breaths and bites as needed—the quick-vibe banana peel windup of “rollerskates”; the endlessly psychedelic metallic rhythm chant of the album’s centerpiece “I am (bells)”; and the triumphant free-folk shouts of “the glorification of small victories,” which is a drastic and collaborative quartet rework of a composition originally recorded for Gay’s album Grapes that serves as further evidence of his steady crew’s interpretive powers.

How, though, does Gay end a collection that covers so much ground? The sweetest sendoff is often the one that sounds like a beginning. The album closer “leave some for you”—a balladeer’s kiss as the sun comes up—pairs a deeply disintegrated series of rhythmic loops with a diddley bow shuffle, ushered by the sturdy-yet-understated swing of Moretti’s kit. Gay’s sweetly intoned low-register lilt is front and center with an affirmation delivered as an earworm. The simple melody carries it home:

You look brand new today

Not cause you need it

Just cause you want it

New

Svaneborg Kardyb are Nikolaj Svaneborg – Wurlitzer, Juno, piano and Jonas Kardyb – drums, percussion a multi award winning duo from Denmark, where they won two “grammys” at the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2019: New artist of the year and Composer of the year.
Drawing on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences, including Nils Frahm, Esbjörn Svennson and Jan Johansson’s landmark recording Jazz På Svenska, their music is an exquisite and joyful melding of beautiful melodies, delicate minimalism, catchy grooves, subtle electronica vibes, Nordic atmospheres and organic interplay, all underwritten by the sheer joy of playing together. Following on from their Gondwana Records debut 'Over Tage', 'Superkilen' their forthcoming album, is named after a public park in the ethnically diverse Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. This erstwhile strip of waste ground was repurposed by the Superflex art group in the early 2010’s to bring together immigrants and locals in a mood of tolerance and unity. Its title feels emblematic of their music, which, equally inventively, creates space and serenity as a tonic within the tense and cluttered environment of 2020’s living. In the same way that the regeneration project has transformed that neighbourhood, Svaneborg Kardyb have drawn on that positive energy to help instigate changes in their own music.

破壊と創造的対話。孤独と絶望を経た魂の歌声。1967年から69年にかけて、アヴァンギャルド・ジャズの革新者Albert Aylerは名門〈Impulse! Records〉に一連のアルバムを録音。1967年にリリースされたこのアルバム『In Greenwich Village』は、アイラーにとって同レーベルからの最初のLPとなった作品であり、間違いなくこのレーベルでのベストと言える内容に仕上げられています。

An iconic rare groove heresy with alternative and avant-garde badassery! Weldon's masterpiece, still widely influential in the world today! This is a masterpiece of Weldon's, which is still widely influential in the world today! The original is almost impossible to find for less than $1000. It is also a masterpiece of 70's jazz with gems of music with incandescent performances. The eloquent and spiritual spoken word piece "Time Capsule" opens the album, and it is heretical from the start. Feelin' Mellow" is a heartwarming soul number co-written and performed with Johnny King of the FATBACK BAND, a masterpiece that reflects the loving feelings of Weldon, who wrote the lyrics. The album's most popular song, the rare groove classic "Deja Vu," is an impressive piece of vocal jazz in the Latin manner, with a space-like tone of the electric piano and tricky soloing. The simple singing and Weldon's philosophical lyrics are beautifully synchronized with the spacy orchestration, and the result is a wonderful mixture of acidic intensity and popularity!　Other great songs include "Watergate-Don't Bug Me!" and "Bananas"! This album is also a bridge to the prestigious Strata East and RCA label's trilogy. This is a masterpiece among masterpieces, filled with pop, experimentation, lively and vivid performances that make you bleed when cut, and Weldon's passion for music. It's like a piece of spectacular storytelling!

This is the 7th album released on his own Nodlew label, after having worked for RCA and Strata-East!　This is a crossover jazz masterpiece released in 1989, featuring mainly sessions from the 80's as well as rare recordings from the early days of Steve Grossman's participation!

Reissue including 2 bonus tracks ! You Must Believe in Spring has been recorded with bassist Eddie Gómez and drummer Eliot Zigmund in August 1977 and released in February 1981, shortly after Evans's death in September 1980. Unlike most posthumous releases of the pianist's recordings, this material had been authorized by Evans for release. It has aptly been described as "one of Bill Evans' most beloved recordings and features possibly the best-sounding audio of any album he ever did." It was Evans's first album for his new label, Warner Brothers, but it was also the last one with his longtime bassist Gómez, who left to pursue other musical projects.

 

Recorded in 1957 and released on the Prestige label, "Sound of Yusef" features Lateef's quintet with Wilbur Harden - flugelhorn, Hugh Lawson - piano, Ernie Farrow - bass, and Oliver Jackson - drums. Lateef's aesthetic was a perfect mixture of hard-driving jazz and a variety of ethnic materials. Even though If compared to later works, "Sounds of Yusef" is still very much rooted in Jazz while the use of traditional ethnic instruments adds colors and flavors without really deviating from the American Jazz tradition. Lateef shines on both tenor sax and flute while the rhythm section swings hard throughout a varied repertoire including an airy version of Strayhorn's ultra-classic "Take the A Train" and a contemplative Lateef's original called "Meditation".  

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Blow-Up is a soundtrack album by Herbie Hancock featuring music composed for Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film Blow-Up, released in 1966. Musically the songs evoke the ambience of swinging Sixties' London with grooves that create effective bluesy Jazz moods on the slow pieces, and funky ones on the up-tempo tracks. The album features performances by Hancock on keys, Freddie Hubbard and Joe Newman on trumpet, Phil Woods and Joe Henderson on sax, Ron Carter on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Rumours go that either the fabled Jimmy Smith or Paul Griffin played the Hammond organ on this record. Rock fans remember the film and the soundtrack for the inclusion of a rare Yardbirds number, "Stroll On" (actually, a Hard Rock adaptation of Tiny Bradshaw's Jump Blues"The Train Kept A-Rollin'" from 1951), one of only three songs they recorded with both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on guitars. The bassline to "Bring Down The Birds" was sampled by Deee-Lite for their 1990 hit single "Groove Is In The Heart" featuring Bootsy Collins. </p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tADslgXuYig?si=hzyp2_KaPHul2Oua" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Thoughts of You, as a phrase, might immediately associate one with feelings of love, endearment, fantasy or even obsession. These are the very sentiments that lay as cornerstones in Salvator Dragatto’s debut LP for Colemine Records. The allure and drama of black & white photography have always played a vital role in how Salvator (aka Joseph Reina) not only views the world but how he hears music. Parallels in film processing to his own recording methods started becoming more and more apparent as the record was being formed; Limitations in exposures rivaling limitations in tracks. Film grain and dust sediments rivaling tape hiss and dirty EQ pots. What most would consider to be imperfections, Dragatto leaned into and found inspiration. This record is an homage to the likes of André Kertész, Robert Frank, Jean-Luc Godard and René Groebli, who’s works have impacted Dragatto’s world so greatly both visually and sonically. Thoughts of You is an unabashed reflection of the noir. From the powerful thematic horn lines to the gentlest string passages, this record is a collection of themes and vignettes that explore the emotions set upon by black and white imagery.

If there’s a group in this age that faithfully carries the torch of real group soul harmony, it must be these three cats from the US west coast by the name of Thee Baby Cuffs. Currently composed of Joe Narvaez and Reality Jonez, prance on the stage with their new song “There Ain’t Enough Roses”. Produced together with the Timmion house band Cold Diamond & Mink, these gentlemen lay down pure soulful romantics enough to fill a jacuzzi. Even though they seem to be walking out from the candy and flower shop empty handed to meet their lover, they are equipped with lyrics and falsetto flows that can melt any heart. Continuing with their tried and tested downtempo ballad style, Thee Baby Cuffs deliver a soul boulder just as potent as their previous Timmion releases “My My Baby” and “You’re My Reason”, not to forget the brilliant work that they have put out on the Raza del Soul label from California. So hop on in the passenger’s seat and let Thee Baby Cuffs serenade you all the way to the sunset. In case you’re more for the instrumentals, flip the single over to reveal the flute-led version that’ll send you to that sweet Steve Parks lowrider territory in no time.

The idea of putting together songs like impressions of a feeling rather than a collection of recordings from a certain decade or style or genre was at the heart of a discussion I had with Norman in 2019. It was a warm July day on the Riviera. I had just finished putting together the sound system for our first and only festival. “It should paint a picture”...

We began a work of compiling. Norm would send tracks and we would try to situate them on the spectrum of a large “carte postale” encompassing in one corner the kitsch resort balneaire, in the other the sail boat in a Caribbean creek, with sandy beaches and glimmering waves in between. With the certainty that the French only seem to possess in matters of taste (my wife Emma is the same), Norm would go: “ah ca c’est 100% Blue Wave” or not at all.

Shortly after, I was introduced by Norm to Charles. The two had been exchanging on references for a while and they had agreed to work together. I was over the moon of course. Our souls had been sucked to Club Meduse shortly prior, and was an inspiration for our aspirations.

The timeline here gets blurry. I lost a bunch of money in the Lebanese crisis and the local economy melted down. Covid hit. The second edition of Pocket of Light Cote d’Azur got cancelled. Movements restrained. Lovers separated. And then the Beirut Port Explosion happened.

I won’t meander long in self pity, but at this very moment in time, the beach seemed so far away, like a forgotten paid reservation at my dream holiday destination. It took me a while to shake that feeling off. Sometimes it still catches me.

We convened to meet in Dusseldorf. We had a party at the Paradise Now. The next day, we had cold tea and cake. Charles walked us through a part of his collection. Every record like a layover on the way to where I left off in my head.

At this moment, seeing Norm and Charles moving to the sound, I remembered that we were up to something golden.

A couple years later here we are. I am thankful for the patience of my collaborators and thrilled to present to you this volume of Transcoastal.

A reminder to keep sailing on that capricious sea despite the weather. Not too far off after the horizon, a gentle vision of paradise awaits.

We went out of our ways, we hope you go out of yours.

Love, light and sand in your shoes,

Mario

Vinyl-only for the time being.

Hardcover. 12.6" L x 9.8" W (2.75 lbs). 192 pages. "Edited with text by Erin Christovale. Foreword by Ann Philbin. Text by Franya J. Berkman. Interviews by Ashley Kahn, Erin Christovale. Rashid Johnson, Cauleen Smith and others pay tribute to a truly extraordinary figure in 20th-century American jazz. This volume unpacks the cultural legacy of musician, spiritual leader, wife and mother Alice Coltrane. Accompanying the eponymous exhibition at Los Angeles' Hammer Museum, the book takes its title from Coltrane's 1977 autobiography and devotional text, Monument Eternal, in which she reflected on her newfound spiritual beliefs and the path to healing and self-discovery. Coltrane was 'ahead of her time,' as her son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, says: she was 'one of the first people to move outside the mainstream, and certainly one of the first female, Black, American jazz musicians to record her own music in her own studio, and to release music on her own terms.' Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal explores themes including spiritual transcendence, sonic innovation and architectural intimacy. The project juxtaposes works from 19 contemporary American artists with pieces of ephemera from Coltrane's archive -- including handwritten sheet music, unreleased audio recordings and rarely seen footage -- to honor her cultural output and practice. Alice Coltrane was born in Detroit in 1937 and took up music at an early age, beginning piano lessons at seven years old. In 1967 her husband, saxophonist John Coltrane, gifted her a harp, on which she went on to record seminal albums including Journey in Satchidananda and A Monastic Trio, making her one of the very few harpists in the history of jazz. Coltrane moved to Southern California in 1972 and founded the Sai Anantam ashram. She lived and worked in Los Angeles, where she died in 2007 at age 69. This book was published in conjunction with Hammer Museum."

Amsterdam-based bass player and producer kotokid's music is a middle ground between alternative R&B and hip-hop, and 80s jazz fusion. Bringing together live drums and drum computers, sequenced analog synths and lush guitar chords and solos, and heavy synth basses alternated with pulsating bass guitar grooves. The result: a wall of sound, with the dynamics and energy of a live fusion band.

AUDIOBOOK, the new project from multi-instrumentalist Sam Gendel and visual artist/filmmaker Marcella Cytrynowicz, consists of 13 tracks in conversation with 26 corresponding illustrations. Both a visual work and instrumental album whose vivid colors are woven into a soundscape that could be a 90s sci-fi soundtrack.

Bahraini-British performer, Yazz Ahmed, is transforming what jazz means in 2017. This trumpet and flugelhorn-playing artist has worked with Radiohead and These New Puritans, experiments with electronic effects, and combines sounds from her shared heritage to author a new narrative for the genre. Part of the new wave of artists credited with stirring up the sound, including Kamasi Washington, Yussef Kamaal, Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, Yazz Ahmed is thrilled by the possibilities of making something new. “I feel like I’m a part of modernising jazz and connecting it with audiences today,” Yazz says. “It’s exciting.”

Her new album ‘La Saboteuse’ is a deep exploration of both her British and Bahraini roots. Ably assisted by musicians including Lewis Wright on vibraphone, MOBO-winning new jazz kingpin Shabaka Hutchings on bass clarinet and Naadia Sherriff on Fender Rhodes keyboard, it’s composed of undulating rhythms, Middle Eastern melody and Yazz’s sonorous trumpet lines. The record sounds like the passage of a desert caravan, bathed in moonlight. The theme of ‘La Saboteuse’ is the sense of self-doubt that Yazz feels when she is creating, personified in a female saboteur, an anti-muse that spurs her into action. “Giving ‘her’ a name has really helped me to identify those negative voices we all get,” she says. “I know what it is and I know how to combat it.”

‘La Saboteuse’ will be released in four chapters incrementally, unravelling the story, before the full version is available. Each chapter has its own cover, with beautiful illustrations by Bristol artist Sophie Bass. “I feel really touched, nobody’s created art from my music before, it’s really special,” Yazz says.

Yazz spent her early childhood in Bahrain, her paternal homeland, before moving to London with her English mother at the age of nine. There, she became fascinated by her grandfather’s trumpet playing, and vowed to learn the instrument herself. “My grandfather, my mum’s dad, was a trumpet player, and I was quite taken by him, inspired. I wanted to learn the trumpet at school.” Jazz became her chosen form of expression, because “I loved the spirit of the music, the freedom. There’s a lot of joy, mystery. I connected with it”. Yazz’s sound is unique. Her take on jazz weaves in Arabic melodies to evocative, cinematic effect. “I love the sounds of Arabic music. The traditional folk singing is so heartfelt, elemental and passionate. I absorbed it as a child, but only in the past few years has it come to the surface in my playing and writing. I want to embrace my culture and my British jazz heritage, the music my grandfather played to me.”

Jazz has traditionally been a male-dominated sphere, though Yazz is challenging that notion. To start with she found it a hindrance, but has been empowered by a new wave of women musicians. “There are more female jazz musicians and attitudes are changing,” she says. “People see that women can play just as well as the men. But there are still areas that haven’t caught up with the rest of society. It’s getting better, but we can do more.”

Future-facing and fascinating, Yazz Ahmed is part of a glimmering new constellation in the jazz firmament. And her next project is destined to take her further into the stars. “I’m planning to write a piece inspired by the ever-changing structures of the universe,” she concludes.